The High Heart Part 32

"Changed in what way?"

"Oh, I don't know. I--I suppose she sees that she--she--miscalculated."

It was his turn to ruminate silently, and when he spoke at last it was as if throwing up to the surface but one of a deep undercurrent of thoughts.

"After the pounding I got three years ago she didn't believe I'd come back."

She accepted this without comment. Before speaking again she sent me another of her frightened, pleading looks.

"She always liked you better than any one else."

He seconded the glance in my direction as he said, with a grim smile:

"Which didn't prevent her going to the highest bidder."

She colored and sighed.

"You wouldn't be so hard on her if you knew what a fight she had to make during papa's lifetime. We were always in debt. You knew that, didn't you? Poor mamma used to say she'd save me from that if she never--"

I lost the rest of the sentence by deliberately rattling the tea things in pouring myself a third or a fourth cup of tea. Nothing but disconnected words reached me after that, but I caught the name of Madeline Pyne. I knew who she was, having heard her story day by day as it unfolded itself during my first weeks with Mrs. Rossiter. It was a simple tale as tales go in the twentieth century. Mrs. Pyre had been Mrs. Grimshaw. While she was Mrs. Grimshaw she had spent three days at a seaside resort with Mr. Pyne. The law having been invoked, she had changed her residence from the house of Mr. Grimshaw in Seventy-fifth Street to that of Mr. Pyne in Seventy-seventh Street, and likewise changed her name. Only a very discerning eye could now have told that in the opinion of society there was a difference between her and Csar's wife. The drama was sufficiently recent to make the topic a natural one for an interchange of confidences. That confidences were being interchanged I could see; that from those confidences certain terrifying, pa.s.sionate deductions were being drawn silently I could also see. I could see without hearing; I didn't need to hear. I could tell by her pallor and his embarra.s.sment how each read the mind of the other, how each was tempted and how each recoiled. I knew that neither pointed the moral of the parable, for the reason that it stared them in the face.

Because that subject, too, was exhausted, or because they had come to a place where they could say no more, they sat silent again. They looked at each other; they looked at me; neither would take the responsibility of giving me a further hint to go. Much as they desired my going, I was sure they were both afraid of it. I might be a nuisance and yet I was a safeguard. They were too near the brink of danger not to feel that, after all, there was something in having the safeguard there.

A few minutes later Mrs. Brokenshire flew to shelter herself behind this protection. She fluttered softly to my side, beginning again to talk of Hugh. Knowing by this time that her interest in him was only a blind for her frightened essays in pa.s.sion, I took up the subject but half-heartedly.

"I've the money here," she confided to me, "if you'll only take charge of it."

When I had declined to do this, for the reasons I had already given, her face brightened.

"Then we can talk it over again." She rose as she spoke. "I can't stay any longer now--but we'll talk it over again. Let me see! This is Tuesday. If I came--"

"I'm always at the Hotel Mary Chilton after six," I said, significantly.

I smiled inwardly at the way in which she took this information.

"Oh, I'll come before that--and I sha'n't keep you--just to talk about Hugh--and see he won't take the money--perhaps on--on Thursday."

As nominally she had come to see me, nominally it was my place to accompany her to the door. In this at least I got my cue, walking the few paces with her, while she held my hand. I gathered that, the minutes of temptation being past, she bore me some grat.i.tude for having helped her over them. At any rate, she pressed my fingers and gave me wistful, teary smiles, till at last she was out in the lighted street and I had closed the door behind her.

It was only half past five, and I had still thirty minutes to fill in.

As I turned back into the room I found Mr. Grainger walking aimlessly up and down, inspecting a bit of l.u.s.trous faence or the backs of a row of books, and making me feel that there was something he wished to say. His movements were exactly those of a man s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his courage or trying to find words.

The simplest thing I could do was to sit down at my desk and make a feint at writing. I seemed to be ignoring my employer's presence, but in reality, as I watched him from under my lids, I was getting a better impression of him than on any previous occasion.

There was nothing Olympian about him as there was about Howard Brokenshire. He was too young to be Olympian, being not more than thirty-eight. He struck me, indeed, as just a big, sinewy man of the type which fights and hunts and races and loves, and has dumb, uncomprehended longings which none of these pursuits can satisfy. In this he was English more than American, and Scottish more than English.

He was certainly not the American business man as seen in hotel lobbies and on the stage. He might have been cla.s.sed as the American romantic--an explorer, a missionary, or a shooter of big game, according to taste and income. Larry Strangways said that among Americans you most frequently met his like in East Africa, Manchuria, or Brazil. That he was in business in New York was an accident of tradition and inheritance. Just as an Englishman who might have been a soldier or a solicitor is a country gentleman because his father has left him landed estates, so Stacy Grainger had become a financier.

As a financier, I understood he helped to furnish the money in undertakings in which other men did the work. In this respect the direction his interests took was what might have been expected of so virile a character--steel, iron, gunpowder, sh.e.l.ls, the founding of cannon, the building of war-ships; the forceful, the destructive. I gathered from Mr. Strangways that he was forever making journeys to Washington, to Pittsburg, to Cape Breton, wherever money could be invested in mighty conquering things. It was these projects that Howard Brokenshire had attacked so savagely as almost to bring him to ruin, though he had now re-established himself as strongly as before.

Being as terrified of him as of his rival, I prayed inwardly that he would go away. Once or twice in marching up and down he paused before my desk, and the pen almost dropped from my hand. I knew he was trying to formulate a hint that when Mrs. Brokenshire came again--But even on my part the thought would not go into words. Words made it gross, and it was what he must have discovered each time he approached me. Each time he approached me I fancied that his poetic eye grew apologetic, that his shoulders sagged, and that his hard, strong mouth became weak before syllables that would not pa.s.s the lips. Then he would veer away, searching doubtless some easier phrase, some more delicate suggestion, only to fail again.

It was a relief when, after a last attempt, he pa.s.sed into the corridor leading to the house. I could breathe, I could think; I could look back over the last half-hour and examine my conduct. I was not satisfied with it, because I had frustrated love--even that kind of love; and yet I asked myself how I could have acted differently.

In substance I asked the same of Larry Strangways when he came to dine with me next day. Hugh being in Philadelphia on one of his pathetic cruises after work, I had invited Mr. Strangways by telephone, begging him to come on the ground that, having got me into this trouble, he must advise me as to getting out.

"I didn't get you into the trouble," he smiled across the table. "I only helped to get you the job."

"But when you got me the job, as you call it--"

"I knew you would be able to do the work."

"And did you think the work would be--this?"

"I couldn't tell anything about that. I simply knew you could do the work--from all the points of view."

"And do you think I've done it?"

"I know you've done it. You couldn't do anything else. I won't go back of that."

If my heart gave a sudden leap at these words it was because of the tone. It betrayed that quality behind the tone to which I had been responding, and of which I had been afraid, ever since I knew the man.

By a great effort I kept my words on the casual, friendly plane, as I said:

"Your confidence is flattering, but it doesn't help me. What I want to know is this: a.s.suming that they love each other, should I allow myself to be used as the pretext for their meetings?"

"Does it do you any harm?"

"Does it do them any good?"

"Couldn't you let that be their affair?"

"How can I, when I'm dragged into it?"

"If you're only dragged into it to the extent of this afternoon--"

"Only! You can use that word of a situation--"

"In which you played propriety."

"Oh, it wasn't playing."

"Yes, it was; it was playing the game--as they only play it who aren't quitters but real sports."

"But I'm not a sport. I've the quitter in me. I'm even thinking of flinging up the position--"

"And leaving them to their fate."

I smiled.

"Couldn't I let that be their affair?"